Harryhausen Monsters!

Oh! Also here are some watercolor pieces I did for a show at my friend Scott Faulkner's studio a couple weeks ago. I love those old stop-motion monsters.

Monsters!

Time to play catch-up. Over on themightyadam.tumblr.com I've posted a few character designs for monsters in a hypothetical dungeon-type game. I've been starting with a bunch of quick thumbnails in my sketchbook, pushing myself firstly to vary their silhouettes. Then it's off to Photoshop with constant reminders not to be too fussy about anything. 

I've also tried to avoid rehashing the worn out designs for monsters, but rest assured that goblins, orcs and other staples of your basic dungeon will show up as I go along!

OHOTMU Redux: Sentinels

My first contribution to Jon's OHOTMU Redux project appeared today.

The Batgirl Mysteries

Here’s an idea I’ve been fiddling with for little while. I have more in my sketchbook but I figured I really needed to let it run free in the wild and move on to the next project. 

I am smitten with the idea of a cartoon featuring Batgirl as a modern Gotham-based Nancy Drew. It feels like a really good, cheerful fit. We all know the tune:

Barbara Gordon, plucky teenage daughter of the Police Commissioner, solves mysteries and chases criminals in a home-made Bat-costume, and equipped with a detective kit of her own devising.
I think it’d be nice to see what kind of rad adventures a brainy, kinda nosy, science-minded detective girl could have.

(Edited to add a couple more which I posted on my tumblr.)

Sugared Bees

Sugared Bees a video by themightyadam on Flickr.

Part of bee husbandry is management of parasites. Rolling the bees in powdered sugar and then shaking them makes any clingy Varroa mites drop off to be counted.

Amber shot this quick video while I scooped up more bees in a tupperware.

I counted zero mites, so yay!

Scribbles

In an effort to keep my drawings simple, I drew these really quickly and really tiny. Added color this afternoon while feeling a bit under the weather.

Little lunch bags

Above is the cover of the minicomic I had available at ECCC earlier this year. This was the story that appeared in Vol. 1 of the B.O.D. Quarterly Anthology I mentioned before. I wanted to make the print edition a little different from the version that appeared in the anthology, so I inclulded some development art, like the sketch on the back cover. (Sharp eyes will catch a pokeball, which will not appear in the story at all.)

Every night, after the boys go to bed, I draw something on their lunch bags for the next school day. The last week I decided to tease them with story moments from upcoming chapters of "Little." These are those.

An Etsy Store

I've opened an Etsy store! Click the bees to be taken away on a magical journey of puppet eyes and, like, one other thing for now. I'll add more stuff to the catalogue later, but I know a few of you want eyeballs, so the store is open!

Big News!

I've been busy lately, and it's kept me away from the drawing table for a bit. But I am happy and very proud to announce (now that we have recovered from the party) that on June 2nd, I married my best friend and love of my life, Amber.

Extra special bonus, I officially became the step-dad of those two ladykillers in the three-piece suits.

It was a perfect day.

(photo by the amazing Jenny Jimenez)

Bees!

I haven't updated since Emerald City! Jon and I had a blast, and thanks to everyone who stopped by the table. More than a few people walked away with eyeballs, prints, and portraits of themselves as muppets, and I was happy to provide.

I wanted to hop online with a bit of a non-art-related update. In addition to frantically trying to plan our wedding,  Amber and I have also been preparing for this last weekend, when we adopted 20,000 new bees. We had had bees before, but had taken a year (or two?) off after they froze to death.(!) In fact, if we were livejournal friends, this whole post is going to look familiar. Anyhow, this time, we're determined to do it right, and build up enough bees and honey to last them through the winter.

As soon as we had a nice weekend, we started building and painting a couple of hives.

The boys are trying to light stuff on fire with magnifying glasses.

Sunny days in Seattle do not go to waste.

Amber did the yellow one, I did the blue one.

I spent a little time every free evening putting together frames, and this weekend we got the email saying "Your bees are here, come get 'em!" So we drove off Saturday morning to put six pounds of bees in the trunk. I keep the hives at my mom's house, about half an hour outside of Seattle. I'm just gonna dump a bunch of photos on you. Click on any one of them to see the whole set on flickr.

Me, pickin' up the bees and puzzling out how to fit them both in the green thing. (Answer: You can't!)

3 pounds o' bees! Before opening the thing up, spray liberally with simple syrup. Delicious.

Here's the Queen in her cage. She's from another hive than these workers, so they need some time to get used to her. The end is stopped up with a stale marshmallow, and by the time they chew through it, her pheromones will have been circulated through the colony. This is like when they introduce a new raptor to the enclosure in Jurassic Park, only nobody died.

The hive, ready for a package. The sugar-water (which I spilled a bit) will keep them fed until they can go out and forage. I also stuck a frame of honey in each hive.

Next, literally pour thousands of animals into a box! That can on the top is more sugar water, which kept them alive while they were shipped from wherever.

I ruined Amber's shot by sticking a frame in the way, but there's a huge pile of sugar-covered bees in the bottom, and I'm putting the frames back in before closing up.

The "Honey Pot" yellow one, all closed up.

So now we let the hives accept their new queens, and we check on them in 5 or 6 days. Hopefully they'll turn a bunch of sugar into wax, and she can start laying eggs!

Prints at ECCC!

These are the prints I'll have available at Emerald City. (Table F-13) Look how our carpet makes it look like I used a Hipstamatic filter!

Tell your friends!

This weekend is Emerald City! Jon and I will be sitting behind table F-13 selling prints, comics, and original art!   Look for this lovely poster that Jon made!

...more about eyeballs.

Just for fun, here's the label I made for the eyeballs. 

Front

Back

I don't know such stuff. I just do eyes.

Exclusively at Emerald City Comicon: Instant Puppet Eyes! Come by our table and pick up a pair for yourself!

 

"WTF?" I hear you ask. Well, here's a picture (from a couple years ago) of my kids demonstrating how they work.

 

These crazy things allow you to turn just about anything anything into a friendly puppet-like fellow in the blink of an eye! F'r instance, see this ordinary hat that my grandma made for me in the 80's? Watch closely as Magnetic Instapuppet Technology transforms it into a bug-eyed buddy!

 
Soooooo cute!

I'll have a bunch of these at Emerald City,  (Me and Jon at Table F-13) and it would be a hoot to see people wearing them around the show floor. I will be hard at work making as many of these as I can. Here is what I imagine it will look like:

Bonus shots!